Walter Geerts & René van Kralingen - The Teachers' Handbook

Introduction

How to become a good teacher This handbook offers the basics required for becoming a successful teacher. A good teacher clearly matters! Becoming a good teacher is a wonderful and, at times, difficult task. Learning a ‘recipe for teaching’ by heart is not sufficient in the long run. Many different perspectives on how to prepare teachers optimally have sur faced over the years; some focus on solid theoretical concepts, others on practi cal experience. Bearing in mind that this handbook aims to satisfy the needs of future teachers, it is useful to start by exploring the backgrounds and achieve ments of these various approaches. On the job learning ‘You will learn that on the job’ or ‘It’s a hands-on learning process’, is often stated. However, it is questionable to what extent this is true. On average a secondary school teacher is in touch with about 120 to 150 students per day. Few manag ers are capable of managing so many people every day. Few entertainers can do a new show every hour for a highly critical audience, let alone six times a day on average. Yet for teachers this is daily practice, which makes teaching one of the most socially oriented professions. Teachers are responsible for the learning process of all these adolescents; their decisions determine what and how students actually learn. Decisions are made entirely by the teacher him/herself, without any involvement from assistants or colleagues. The classroom is his own domain and he* is in charge. This high level of autonomy means that, despite their social orientation, teachers hardly receive any feedback from superiors. An office employee receives frequent feedback from his boss or colleagues: ‘Nice work, that report of yours’ or ‘Well, I thought your presentation was some what chaotic and unprofessional’. Specific feedback on skills is essential for the learning process, also for future teachers. Research on performance levels of teachers who entered the job force with alternative qualifications (Verloop & Lowyck, 2009) indicates they only achieve desirable results under certain cir cumstances. They have a greater chance of success if their initial degree contains elements of theory as well as practical experience and they receive intensive coaching during their initial teaching stage. Simply joining the school workforce

* All references to persons or functions refer to both female and male persons.

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